[T3] List posting etiquette

[Jim Adney <jadney@vwtype3.org>]

Well, we seem to be starting off the New Year pretty well, but I thought it 
might be time for me to mention once again some of the things we like to 
encourage each other to do when posting to the Type 3 list. While some of these 
thing certainly do take a little bit more of your time, keep in mind that they 
affect the list email received by ~400 people worldwide who will appreciate 
your effort.  

1) If you're responding to a previous message, use the previous subject line 
and quote enough material to make it clear what you're responding to.  

2) Don't quote more material than necessary. Excess quoting just clutters the 
archives, consumes web server space, slows down the archive index, and wastes 
internet bandwidth. Keep in mind that those "few extra lines" get saved 
"forever" in the archives and get reposted to 400 listees, so it is not as 
insignificant as it may seem to you at first.  

Also, I realize that it may just be my personal preference, but I hate to see 
responses written at the top of a message, because that means that I have to 
scroll down first to see what is being responded to and then scroll back up to 
see the response. If you think that it will be clear what you are responding to 
without reading the quoted material, then perhaps no quoting was necessary in 
the first place. Writing your responses at the top also tends to encourage not 
editing the quoted material at all, which frequently leaves rediculous amounts 
of quoted material at the bottom.  

Remember, if you haven't scrolled down to the bottom of your response before 
you send it, then there is probably a lot of material there which is irrelevant 
and could easily and appropriately be deleted at this stage.  

Yes, it IS worth your time to edit the quoted material in your response so that 
it is concise and takes up as little space as possible. All the rest of us out 
here will appreciate your effort.  

3) If your post is a long one, Internet email convention is to separate 
paragraphs with an empty line (just an extra carriage return.) This allows all 
the various email programs to recognize the new paragraph and avoids paragraphs 
that appear to all run together. Some programs like to start paragraphs with an 
indent. While this style actually causes no problems on its own, it usually 
includes no blank lines between paragraphs, which DOES cause problems, simply 
because most programs don't handle it well.  

Double line-spaced posts also cause problems, because most email programs will 
interpret each line as a new paragraph so the line wrap will get confused. Your 
post will all get thru, but it will appear "screwed up" (that's the technical 
term) for most listees. Remember, not everyone uses the same email program.  

4) To conserve list space, Greg has wisely chosen to prohibit list posts in 
HTML and messages with attachments. List messages should be in ASCII (simple 
text) form, no RTF, or (God forbid) MS Word or Works, Word Perfect, WordStar, 
etc.) Some email programs now come with HTML set as the default. For many 
reasons, if you are using one of these, you should turn it off for everyone, 
not just the Type 3 list.  

5) And finally, when you send a message to the list which is on a NEW topic, 
PLEASE send it with a NEW subject line and NO quoted material.  

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year to everyone out there,  

-- 
Jim Adney
jadney@vwtype3.org
Madison, WI 53711-3054
USA


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